Mcgowan theater after today tonights program, National Archive staff and volunteers will present each of you with the vietnam veteran lapel pin. On the back of the pin is embossed a grateful nation thanks and honors you. The United States of american vietnam war commemoration is a National Initiative and the lapel pin is the nations lasting memento of thanks. Last veterans day, we opened our Current Special exhibition remembering vietnam in the lawrence f. Obrien gallery upstairs. If you havent already, i hope you take some time to go through it before it closes on january 6th. The exhibit is a mediarich exploration of the vietnam war featuriining interviews with veterans. Its a fascinating collection of newly discovered and iconic original documents, photographs, film footage and artifacts that illuminate 12 critical episodes in the war that divided the peoples of both the United States and vietnam. The visual imagery of remembering vietnam relies on the talents of the many photographers who risked their own safety to capture the stories of the war in fpictures. Tonight well hear from some of those combat photographers and hear their own stories. Its my pleasure to welcome lee reynolds to the stage. He is the Strategic Communications officer for the u. S. Army center of military history here in washington. Previously, he was senior manager of the Universal Studios hollywood backlot tour from 2014 to 2016 and now works as an independent contractor as an actor, screen yn writwriter ande producer. His more than 20 years of experience in the Entertainment Industry as an actor, screenwriter, playwright, producer, and director. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome lee reynolds and the panel. [ applause ] well, thank you, mr. Ferriero, and to the National Archives and records add stri administration for hosting and cosponsoring the event here this evening. Thank you to all of you for c e coming out and attending the vent. Im lee reynolds. The Strategic Communications officer for the u. S. Army center of military history. And ill be moderating the event this evening. The center of military history is responsible for the recording, the official history of the army in peace and war. While advising the army staff on historical matters. Our core responsibilities are to educate the force and the public, to inspire americas men and women to serve, and to preserve our army heritage. I invite you to visit our website at history. Army. Mil. Thats history. Army. Mil. For more mission and our responsibilities. And about the publications we provide. Were proud and honored to support the 50th commemoration of the vietnam war with this evenings Panel Presentation about the department of the Army Special Photographic Office or daspo for short. Daspo was authorized by president kennedy in 1962 and closed down in 1974 following the end of the vietnam war. It was charged with documentary films and quality photo products showing the armys operations world waid. They would report directly to the army chief of staff. Three detachments were created, one in europe covering operations there. One in hawaii covering operations throughout the pacific theater. And one in panama to cover operations in central and south america. Tonight we will focus on the pacific daspo office. And vietnam, specifically. The daspo teams made up in part by the menu see on stage tonight would carry state of the art equipment in the day out into combat and often by themselves and would embed in army units in the field. They went were civilian journalists either couldnt go or wouldnt go. The results as you will see tonight captured on film through their lenses were some of the most iconic pictures and films of the vietnam war. These images were not just used by the army. They could be seen in newspapers, magazines and films throughout the United States and the world. At the end of the presentation tonight were going to have about ten minutes for questions and answers. Hopefully on the way in, you all were able to get index cards and pencils to write down your questions. We have some assistants on each side, they raise their hand, theyll collect up those cards during the presentation and will get them back to me and well use those to guide the question and answer period. If you need an index card or a pencil, just let one of our assistants know. Id like to introduce dr. Eric valard. Hes digital historian for the center of military history and armys principal vietnam war historian. Hes also author of the new book about vietnam called staying the course october 1967 to september 1968. And hell be available in the lobby after the event to sign copies of the book, and his book will be available for purchase. Ladies and gentlemen, dr. Bellard. [ applause ] thank you, all, for coming and those of you tuning into the live stream, those who will see this afterward. This is a really exciting event. Something thats been in the works for a while and im just pleased to be here. With these great photographers. I was hired at the u. S. Army center of military history to write the book which became staying the course which was the Third Operational combat history in the vietnam war series. It was publish eed about a year ago. In fact, we had the opening book event here, National Archives. In the course of doing the research over many years, i came to really value the photographic archival history. The images, the film, from the vietnam war. Helping me understand what i was reading in the text. Being a visual person, anyway, i suppose, i gravitated toward it and about four, five, years ago, in fact, created a facebookbased group, vietnamhistory. Org, as a way of reaching out to veterans and engaging with them and families and getting more information. And one of the draws, i think, of this group was these great photos that i was finding at the National Archives. You know, i was going up to college park and digitizing these and, you know, i hat seen a lot of photos, but a lot of these id never seen before and it was such a revelation. And over the course of digitizing these photos, certain names popped in again and again. Lathune, acheson, and hanson, and others. And when i formed the facebook group, began putting out these photos which i would digitally enhance, photoshop and some other programs. This photo you see behind you is kind of the current generation of these toype of photos where poured the pixie dust over them and breathed life back into them, take all the little dings and scratches and adjust the color, well, these guys were around. And so they became members of the group and so i got to know them and they remain members of the group. So, i mean, its such a wonderful thing to be able to post a photo, say, hey, bob, what you were doing that day when you took that shot . Oh, yeah, we were this, that and the other. As a result of that kind of dialogue, i thought, this is something we need to share with everyone. The world needs to know about these guys. They need to hear the stories behind the photos. So thats where the idea behind this came. So we worked together and, again, i want to give a special thanks to our executive director, center of military history, Charles Bowery jr. Who believed in this mission, supported us and made this all happen. So tonight youre going to hear from, you know, five of the top photographers in the vietnam war. I see this as the beginning of an ongoing project. Again, im posting these photos on my social media feeds and you also will find them on the center of military history social media feeds so encourage you to, you know, to, you know, follow those things and learn more about it. But tonight were going to hear from these five individuals. And im going to run the slideshow for most of them until we get to the final one, but without further ado, id like to turn over to our first, bill st. Hamm hammill, who will tell us about the history of daspo and what it took to herd this group of wild cats. Keep them in line when they were doing their thing in vietnam. Thank you, erik. Im sam hamel. I was captain with daspo. And i started with the United StatesArmy Photographic agency. In the pentagon, worked my way into daspo, i left there january 1st, 1970. My mos was an 8500 and 8511. Well, whats that . 85 h is a pictorial unit commander and an 8511 is a Motion Picture tv director. In those capacities, i wore a couple different hats. Well get into that in a moment. To talk about the origin of daspo, as legend would have it, around 1961 or 62, general david or george decker, im sorry, who was the chief of staff of the army at that time, would go to briefings over at the white house with jfk and the other chiefs were there also. Air force, navy, et cetera. And every time decker would go there, he would would be out and hed be furious because hed say to his deputy, you know, that curtis lemay, every time we go in there, hes mouthing off and his photographs and his movies and he puts us to shame. I want to do something just like he does. And i want it done now. And he of course, curtis lemay was affectionately called iron ass but he wanted to compete with lemay. So a delta force concept was developed with decker and his staff and he wanted an elite special ops unit. Im going to read to you what they tried to create and which they did. Im going to read it because i dont want to miss something. He wanted a Rapid Response team. He wanted the team to be full time. He wanted the team to be highly mobile. He wanted them unencumbered by red tape, security clearances and travel orders. He wanted everything to have a secret or topsecret clearance. Cover worldwide military subjects. He wanted quality still and Motion Picture products. He wanted us to have the best equipment and always tdy into the countries we went to and we were told to live on the economy. And the reason for that is, well, ill get into that in a second, but also it was special missions that were going to be ordered by the deputy chief of staff for operations out of the pentagon. Thats who we worked for. Thats where our budget came from. And the units that they developed were for pacific panama and europe as lee said but europe was the deal was if its going to the pacific, local commands could not take charge or have anything to do with our unit except, perhaps, give them an office on the base. And so europe said, no, were not going to do that. Pacific said, fine, you no, our hands off. Sink back. Hands off. Same in panama, fine. Let them come in. Europe said no. So europe never did get a team. It ended up going to conis and thats where it stayed. The objective was Central Control over the assignments, supplies, training, and the disposition of the work product. It got sent where it should go. The action officer to put all that together was major arthur jones. He was at the center. He put a Team Together, ill be very brief, he wanted he did a lot of developing with it. He wanted an acronym. They came up with daspo, department of the army special photo office. He cherrypicked the photographers that would go into the initial units. They got them from the pic center. And through the course of time, they would go out and try to find enlisted men and officers who had backgrounds in photo. In my particular case, i was found by Lieutenant Colonel walter ohalloran who found me at ft. Gordon, georgia, going through the officers communication course. I had three years of background in Motion Pictures because i worked for a studio in chicago. Ended up having to take my commission from Loyola University in 1965. And he found me and he put me in the pentagon and i thought, boy, this is a really wellgreased organization. They know what theyre doing. So, anyway, the other deal was no parades, no change of commands, in marching bands. You guys dont shoot that. You are going to do documentaries. Youre going to do training films. Youre going to do combat. And youre going to be not a Public Information officer or office type of unit. And then lastly, special orders with a license to steal that we were accused of one time in okinawa. Ted and i were on a mission, was top secret, and i never told anybody about it. I wont even talk about it tonight. I happened to open a book and the middle page was written by the author of the puzzle palace, top secrets, whatever the name of the book was, and there was this whole deal in the middle of the book all about our topsecret mission. So, the secret was out. Anyway, im going to read a few lines from our instructions. We were to take military aircraft when we went on our tdy trips. If there was no military aircraft available, you could take a private airline. Panam, twa, to get to the southeast asia. If that wasnt available, you could take a foreign flag, you could rent the ship, a naval boat. You could do anything you wanted to get and accomplish your mission. And if anything would deter us from accomplishing our mission, we could circumvent the problem and go do what we wanted. We would rent cars, trains, planes, we would do anything we wanted to. So we had total freedom to move around. And this is what really irritated that colonel in okinawa. It said the utilization of government quarters and mess is not required. Well, we walked in there, he said, youre not going to a hotel, youre going to be on boq, youre going to be in enlisted quarters. I said, sir, we cant function that way and thats not what our orders say. Going back to what i said originally, living reason the economy, we could we had to be together 24 hours a day. We were a mobile force ready to go. And if the enlisted men were out, i was downtown in a boq in saigon and we have orders to go do something, well, it would probably take two days to get us all together and then also we would, you know, the enlistment would have to peel potatoes that day because they had kp. Well, there goes the mission, you know . So thats why we lived on the economy. Anything that would adversely affect our performance of duty we could circumvent, then the other thing that really ticked that colonel off is we were authorized to wear and carry civilian clothes. He didnt like that. We had to be in uniform. Photo number one is why we were living together and thats what i was just saying, that we had to be together 24 hours a day. This was the villa that we lived in and we had how am i doing on time, okay . Two minutes. I got two . Ill talk fast. Im trying. We all were on tdy per diem. We chipped in and paid the rent for the house. We had some locals who did our laundry and cooked for us. And the guys would come home, have a hotcooked meal, would get a hot shower. Know toe two is my capacity as an 8500 commander. This was a typical situation at the villa. We called it the villa. It wasnt that fancy. And we my job was the welfare and safety of my men and make sure they had a roof over their head and everything was functioning. I had great ncos who made that happen. And basically, thats that was what was going on. My job every other day was to go to the warroom. We call it the warroom. It was a briefing room. Where we were i was briefed on what was going on and each of the four corps in vietnam. I would see where there would be activity then i would jot all that down. By activity i mean some place that was hot. Id put it go back to the villa, put a Team Together and thats where they would go, to that location. Many times they hitchhiked. We could periodically get them orders to be on a flight, but for the most part, thats what happened. This photo, thered be two or three more teams upcountry at this time, so this would be the number of personnel there. At any given time. There would be 2, 3, 9, 12, other guys upcountry while these guys would be back and they were always rotating. Theyd go up to three days, four days. And then as a mo pic director, my 8511 capacity, i used to get some really cushy jobs. Here im on the lawn with bob lafoon and a couple other guys. And with Vice President hubert humphrey. General westmoreland. Ambassador bunker. And Barry Zorthian who was the pr guy for saigon and vietnam at the time. This is what i call a cushy assignment. Thats my butt you can see in that know toe. The next photo is the opposite where it was not so cushy the father of helicopter warfare, flew me to d. C. , he went to the pentagon. I met him. He told me what he wanted so i went back and did a complete series on the first tier cav division. So the next photo shows me out making that film, the first air cav story. We were shooting i was on an air assault. I had i couldnt resist taking a shot, so i did, and theres some other shots that go along with that that were still trying to find. So in that particular film, i had three Motion Picture cameras shooting at one time. Three different choppers. It was a big production. That was because Lieutenant General kanard, you want helicopter in the air . Whatever you want, you got. I want this filmed, though. At one time we had 15 helicopters up there going to war doing their thing. We shot every conceivable subject in vietnam and the networks bought our footage. We put the footage on panam, twa, to get it back. For processing. The army pictorial center. Post daspo, i opened my own advertising agency, pr firm, and have done that from 73 or so to the present day. So, we are honored to have some of daspos finest photographers, still and motion men, sitting here tonight. Our next speaker is one of the greatest daspo still photographers, bob lafoon. Bob . Thats me. Im bob lafoon. [ applause ] i was born in washington, d. C. Hail to the redskins. Im retired now, fully. Live in mcdonough which is south of georgia. My basic day is playing golf. In the afternoons i end up at the jonesboro or american leg n legion, have dinner and go to bed sometime around 9 00 or earlier if possible. I enlisted in the army in 1964 and graduated from Photography School from ft. Monm